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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Shreveport Mobile Center Open from Monday, April 16th to Saturday, April 21st The Road Home Program will be Opening a Mobile Housing Assistance Center in Shreveport, Louisiana on Wednesday, April 4th. The center will be opened until Saturday, April 16th. There will be an Open House on Wednesday, April 4th from 6-9pm at the Shreveport Convention Center, 400 Caddo Street, Shreveport, LA 71101. All Louisiana homeowners are encouraged to come out to meet with the Road Home Staff and tour the facility and to schedule appointments to meet with a housing advisor. There will be staff present at the open house to answer questions about the program and to assist homeowners with the completion and/or filing of applications to The Road Home Program. Formore information visit www.road2LA. org or call 1-888-ROAD-2- LA."We are making every effort to reach all eligible homeowners and ensure that they can move through the system as quickly as possible,"said Michael Taylor, director of the Disaster Recovery Unit, Office ofCommunity Development. "It's vitally important that Louisiana homeowners who are living in the Atlanta area call the program to file their applications and make an appointment at the Atlanta center." Louisiana residents currently residing in Shreveport or the Northwestern Louisiana area who have applied to the program, but have not yet scheduled their appointments may do so by calling1.888.ROAD.2. LA and choosing prompt #4. Homeowners who have made appointments at one of the Louisiana Center have the option to reschedule those appointments at the Shreveport location by also calling that number.

St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in New Orleans and its suburb in the form of another parade! It's the perfect season for another celebration ... after all, ....it's New Orleans, and we love to parade!

Our annual St. Patrick's Day Parades are considered another opportunity for family and friends to get together and enjoy a day outdoors. It seems as if the entire city is on the street with picnic baskets, umbrellas, and their recreational vehicles...enjoying one of the biggest street parties of the year! Men and women in walking groups from various clubs in the city dress in costumes of green give out flowers, beads, and kisses to lucky parade goers along the route.

Music adds to the festivities with bands and amplifiers in the parade, and walking groups dancing down the street...only stopping to award their beautiful beads and flowers to the lucky parade goers along the route.Floats and truck floats (those on flatbed trailors created by the riders themselves) respond to the call, "Throw me something, Mister!" Historically, the parade's most famous throws, are cabbages, carrots, onions...and moonpies! (You may even see a potato or two in the air!)

Spring arrives in New Orleans with colorful blooms and St. Patrick's Day parades. The Iron Chef reopens Stella! Restaurant and the Historic New Orleans Collection adds a new exhibit, from 2006.

2 quarts fresh corn kernels1 large cabbage, chopped7 cups chopped celery4 fresh green cayenne peppers, seeded and chopped (optional)4 fresh red cayenne peppers, seeded and chopped (optional)6-1/2 cups chopped red bell peppers6-1/2 cups chopped green bell peppers1/2 cup salt1 (2-ounce) box of dry mustard2 pounds sugar1/2 tablespoon turmeric2 quarts while distilled vinegar2 tablespoons cornstarchStepsCombine all of the ingredients in a large, heavy pot over medium-high heat and mix well. Bring to a boil, and cook for one hour, stirring often. Pack in hot sterilized pint-size canning jars, leaving a one-fourth inch space at the top of each jar. Wipe the jar rims with a clean, damp cloth, fit them with hot lids, and tightly screw on the metal rings. Process in a bath of boiling water for 10 minutes (the water should cover the jars by about one inch), cool on a wire rack, then store in a cool, dark place.Makes about 7 pints.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

NEW ORLEANS -Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at the Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday for installing defective pumps at three major drainage canals just before the start of last summer's hurricane season.

"This could put a lot of our people in jeopardy," Blanco said. "It begs the question: Are we really safe?"

She called for a congressional investigation into how the Corps allowed it to happen.

Citing internal documents, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Corps installed the 34 pumps last year in a rush to fix the city's flood defenses, despite warnings from one of its experts that the machinery was defective and likely to fail in a storm.

At the same time, the Corps, the White House and state officials were telling residents that it was safe to come back to New Orleans, which was devastated in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina breached the city's floodwalls.

On Wednesday, Donald Powell, the administration's Gulf Coast hurricane recovery czar, said that he was never shown the memo, and that assurances he made that New Orleans was as safe as or safer than it was before Katrina were based on information he got from the Corps.

"We were asking the Corps to do the job as fast as possible to get the condition of the levee back to make it as safe as possible," Powell said. "That was the primary goal above all goals — safety in the region."

Because the 2006 hurricane season was mild, the new pumps were never put to the test.

The Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment, Moving Water Industries Corp.of Deerfield Beach, Fla., are still struggling to get the 34 pumps, designed and built under a $26.6 million contract, working properly.

The pumps have been plagued by excessive vibration, overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets.

"You want to build confidence, but you have to tell it like it is," said Gwen Bierria, 65, who is rebuilding her home with her husband next to the London Avenue canal, one of two canals that were breached during Katrina and flooded vast sections of the city.

"It's like being pregnant, sooner or later it's going to show," she said. "And Katrina was a big-time show."

MWI is owned by J. David Ellerand his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. And Eller has donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The U.S. Justice Department sued MWI in 2002, accusing it of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary water-pump equipment. The case has yet to be resolved.

As for whether the city was as safe as the Corps claimed, Powell said: "We got through a hurricane season without a hurricane so we didn't have to answer that question."

But he said residents should not panic as the new hurricane season approaches. "The corps is working as fast it can to get the systems back up. The levee system is better than it has ever been," he said.

The Corps said it decided to press ahead with installation of the pumps because some pumping capacity was better than none.

The 34 pumps were installed in the drainage canals that take water from this bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city and deposit it in Lake Pontchartrain. They represented a new ring of protection that was added to New Orleans' flood defenses after Katrina. The city also relies on miles of levees and hundreds of other pumps in various locations.___

*Pumps put in place by the Army Corps of Engineers pump water from New Orleans' 17th Street Canal to Lake Pontchartra in New Orleans, Saturday, March 10, 2007. One of the levees along the canal failed during Hurricane Katrina contributing heavily to the flooding of the city. The pumps and floodgate are designed to control the water level in the drainage canals during a storm event. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

Combine the water, milk and egg in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Add the flour, baking powder, salt, and the sugar and mix until the batter is smooth. Pour the oil into a large, deep pot or a deep fryer and heat to 360º F. Drop the batter by spoonfuls into the hot oil and fry, turning two or three times, until they are golden brown. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

C-Murder's music is all about where he grew up in the Calliope Projects 3rd Ward (CP3), one of the toughest projects in New Orleans. This is the flip-side of the Big Easy...not Bourbon Street, not Mardi Gras, just the mean streets where poverty, drug abuse and violence are epidemic. See his neighborhood uncensored: gunfire breaking out...children toting guns in their waistbands...as well as warmth and love so vital to the neighborhood's survival and its hope for the future.

Part 1

The Ward touches the Mississippi River as its front. The down river boundary is Canal Street, below which is the city's 4th Ward. The upper boundary is Julia Street, originally to the New Basin Canal; the former canal route in this area is now I-10. For most of this route from the river back is the 2nd Ward; from Carrollton Avenue up it borders the 17th Ward.

The back boundary is City Park Avenue (formerly known as Bayou Metairie Road), across which is another portion of the 4th Ward.

Part 2

The 3rd Ward encompasses the majority of the Central Business District near the River. The Ward includes the city seat of government, both the old 19th century City Hall on Lafayette Square and the new City Hall Complex on Loyola Avenue. Further back from the Central Buiness District is the Tulane/Gravier neighborhood. At Tulane and Broad are the Courthouse and Orleans Parish Prison.

Continuing back, the Ward includes a large section of the Mid City neighborhood. The famous Calliope, Magnolia & Melpomene Projects are located in the 3rd Ward. The Calliope Projects are a center of the heroine trade on the street level, which is as big a problem in New Orleans as cocaine is in Miami.

Part 3

Celebrities From in the Third Ward

Rappers Master P, Silkk the Shocker, C-Murder, the Birdman AKA "Baby" Brian Williams, Juvenile, and Soulja Slim were all born in the Third Ward.

Remember when Bush promised to rebuild New Orleans, and help the victims of Hurricane Katrina? Now the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is evicting an entire trailer park full of people who were made homeless by Katrina. It’s been 18 months. And people are still living in “temporary” housing because so much of New Orleans is still uninhabitable.

Nicole Dumasof FEMA, left, talks with Carolyn Young about where she will live. Fifty-eight families at the Louisiana site were given 48 hours to move.Courtesy of Appletree

A couple awakens in the middle of the night to find their pitch-dark house filling with water. Clambering into their attic, cluttered with a lifetime of possessions that scratch open old wounds, they grapple not only with their terror at the rising water but also with the life they have lived together. When the water finally laps at the attic itself, they claw a hole in the roof to escape. But only one of them is slender enough to squeeze through. Caught between an attic of ghost stories and a rooftop that reveals a New Orleans utterly transformed into a sea of sunken houses, the man and woman struggle to keep the guttering flame of their love from being extinguished by a flood of secrets and feelings never before confessed as they wait for help to arrive.